


Feather to Fly

by AlulaSpeaks



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Sam Has Powers, Season/Series 12 Speculation, peripheral Crowley, peripheral Ruby, powers!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 19:51:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8222863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlulaSpeaks/pseuds/AlulaSpeaks
Summary: “You didn’t need the feather to fly, you had it in you the whole time, Dumbo”Ruby, Lucifer Rising





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off that one line of Ruby's in Lucifer Rising. I've always been fascinated by what that line might mean and I love powers!Sam, so I had to explore it at least a little. This was written as part of my 12 day countdown to Season 12. 8 days left, folks! All feedback is appreciated.
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](www.tumblr.com/alulaspeaks)!

Sam’s existence has been a study of pain these last one hundred and eighty five years. He is no longer afraid of it. He tries to tell them this is a mistake. He tells Toni that she is wasting her time, but she seems determined to do it. Taunting his captors may have been a poor choice. It’s a very Dean thing to do, after all, but Sam will keep Dean alive and before him in whatever way he can. Dean may have gone to the empty but as long as Sam exists then so will some part of Dean.

They hurt him. They burn and cut and name him monster. Through it all Sam gives voice only to screams, never to answers. Their frustration is some measure of amusing even in his current state. Sam has never been able to quit vengeance entirely.

On the second day, they cast a spell over him. It smells of burning bone and amaranth and Sam knows it is meant to control him, to compel him to answer to their interrogation. He expects to feel it like a drug making sludge of his system but instead it feels like of pressure as if all the secrets of his life, all the nightmarish years in the cage, the thousand, thousand ugly truths Lucifer whispered build and build until, with a crack, the pressure burst outwards. His head feels wide open and emptied out.

The door in Sam’s mind – the one he slammed closed as the cage slammed open and Lucifer rose, the one that he spent a year of penance locking, sealing, and covering over – shakes free of it’s plaster and rattles on its hinges. Behind it a shade moves. Sam tried to tell them this was a mistake.

—

Dean keeps his promise. He does not leave Sam. He comes for him with Mary beside him and lays his hand on Sam’s cheek like absolution. Sam returns home with them, though he knows he is changed.

—

Three weeks later, Crowley’s bid to reclaim Hell has taken a desperate turn. They hunt him as they should have done years ago, with the intent to destroy.

The spell is powerful. Ten humans kneel around an alter, chained and gagged. Ten lambs to be slaughtered.

Crowley was waiting for them. A few chanted words in Latin and they find themselves pulled to their knees. Apparently the spell requires thirteen sacrifices. Sam cannot move or speak or hardly breathe. So here Sam will die, on his knees between his brother and his mother. There are worse ways to go and it has been so long since Sam has rested. Crowley can’t make it quick of course. His penchant for the melodramatic overriding his rule about monologing. He rails and he whines and he finds a way to blame this on them, with special attention to the bond he feels he shares with Dean. Dean, for his part, manages not to vomit.

Around them the spell swirls in gusts of gray and red, sulfur and brimstone hanging heavy in the air. Deans eyes are wide and wild when they find Sam’s. Dean doesn’t know how to save them though he struggles against the spell.

Sam cannot look at Dean and think of rest, cannot stomach the idea of never seeing his brother again, cannot give up while Dean is still fighting.

Sam closes his eyes and reaches for the door, for the part of himself he locked away when he broke the final seal.

Sam has never forgotten a word that was said that day. He has forgiven himself for his words, forgiven Dean, too, but never Ruby. Never her. He remembers her in the rapture of her joy, dark and beautiful and terrible. Her name a name to curse the damned with but one that will never make the history books. Even in the accounts he writes for the Men of Letter’s library he does not write her name. She can have Carver’s books, but she can’t have Sam’s. Let her be a fiction to the world, never a truth. A petty revenge, and the only one Sam can leverage.

Still her words live on in his head.

_“You didn’t need the feather to fly,_

_you had it in you the whole time, Dumbo”_

He had thought his choices and the black rage that fed them, were Ruby’s feather. Maybe they were, but maybe the demon blood was, too. Both leash and lure, but only leading him to himself. Sam had said there was no going back.

Now Sam is standing in front of that door again, the deep grain of the wood smeared with dirt. Here is a part of himself he bricked away, hoping it would starve and die. But it’s very much alive, he can hear it pacing back and forth see the passing of its shadow through the crack under the door. It hisses once, whispers, “Sam,” and falls still. It does not speak again, but still Sam knows that voice. It is not Ruby’s, nor Azazel’s, nor Lucifer’s, nor is it one voice only. It is his and Dean’s layered together.

Sam flings the door wide open, and the shade behind it – neither shadow or light alone – passes into him.

When breathes in, he can feel the universe expand around him as if it breathes in, too. Sam opens his eyes to Dean staring back at him. There is no fear in his face, no disgust, so Sam knows that despite the strength thrumming through him, his eyes are not black.

“It’s ok, Dean” Sam says into the wild raging of the spell. Across from him Crowley trembles.


End file.
